Well, Cowboys, Cowgirls, and… Mx? Ugh, What in the World Is That? Howdy, partners—or whatever we’re supposed to call ourselves now. I saddled up for Cattle Country, expecting a rootin’-tootin’ cowboy adventure, but the first thing I’m hit with is a character creator offering “Mr.,” “Ms.,” and… “Mx”? Seriously? What kind of highfalutin, city-slicker nonsense is this? Are we ranchin’ cattle or hosting a gender studies seminar in the Wild West? I reckon the developers at Castle Pixel thought they’d spice up the frontier with this trendy, head-scratchin’ option, but it’s about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Who’s out here in 1800s Hill Valley identifying as “Mx”? The cows? The bandits? I’m half-expecting my horse to demand they/them pronouns next. If this is the kind of decision-making we’re getting in the character creator, it tells you everything about the mess that is Cattle Country. The “Mx” option screams that the developers are more interested in chasing social media clout than making a coherent cowboy game. It’s a sign of a title so lost in trying to be trendy it forgets why we’re here: to wrangle cattle, not to navigate identity politics. The game itself is a hollow shell—farming feels like a chore, with clunky mechanics that make you miss the simplicity of a real ranch. The town’s deader than a tumbleweed, with NPCs standing around like they’re waiting for a lecture on inclusive lasso techniques. Every feature, from mining to fishing, feels like a half-baked knockoff of better games, slapped together with all the charm of a busted wagon wheel. Save your hard-earned cash, folks. Cattle Country is a confused, poorly executed mess that’s more interested in preaching than delivering a decent Western sim. Skip this one and keep your spurs pointed toward something that respects your time and does not push destructive and harmful identity politics.

YAY a fun game like Stardew... Wait I know what a MR and MRS is what in the world is a MX Look it up... Ugh.. This woke stuff in an escapist game. No thank you. Who knows what else is in the game now. Refunded..

I made this game so of course I love it! I've played Cattle Country for 100+ hours and always had a nice relaxing time. YEE-HAW!

Started off strong with cowboy vibes and cattle dreams, but the voice acting tries way too hard to be Arthur Morgan, felt more parody than prairie. 7/10 for Cattle Country, 0/10 for the knockoff cowboy impression. 🤠 Follow my curator page for more pixelated cowboys and brutally honest yeehaws: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42602807-Osiris-Reviews/

This might be Red Dead Redemption 3.

This game is a mess. It shamelessly copies Stardew Valley but manages to implement every feature worse. Entire mechanics could be cut out, and the game wouldn’t suffer—because they already don’t matter. The economy is completely broken, progression feels meaningless, and most systems are either redundant or flat-out broken. Hunting Completely busted. A feather sells for 100g, a pelt for 40g, and meat for 100g. Bullets cost 11g, and shooting drains no energy. Do the math: you’ll want to shoot everything that moves. Making 10k–20k gold per day is effortless. Mining The worst part of the game by far. There is nothing to discover—just frustration. The deeper you go, the more swings it takes to mine a block, and the less rewarding it becomes. And then there are gem deposits: Gems have literally no use—no crafting recipe requires them. On top of that, they sell for peanuts, worth less than a feather. The deeper you go, the more gem nodes you find, meaning you’re rewarded with garbage the further you progress. Deposit yields don’t scale with depth either, so there’s no incentive to keep going. Mining feels like a punishment rather than a feature. You’ll avoid it at all costs. Shops Progression-breaking. You can buy nearly everything straight from the store—including items you haven’t unlocked and you shouldn’t yet know how to craft. Fishing Easily ignored. Fish traps cost under 100g (basically one bird’s worth of loot). Fill your map with them and generate 5k–10k gold per day with zero effort. Crafting Too many recipes demand absurd amounts of iron. But why bother? You’re already rich from hunting and fishing, and you can buy most items anyway. Crafting becomes irrelevant. Farming Equally ignorable. You can buy sprinklers directly from the shop, so there’s no real farming progression. Health Pointless. Anything that kills you does so instantly regardless of your health bar, while “enemies” barely scratch you otherwise. Relationships This ends up being your main gameplay loop—and it’s dreadful. You’ll run around handing out stones to everyone, because there’s no benefit to giving characters items they actually like. Progression is tied to this shallow, repetitive system, unlike Stardew Valley where relationships are optional. Thankfully, passive income streams give you all the free time in the world to spam rocks at villagers. Cooking Another wasted system. Healing isn’t necessary, energy rarely runs out (except while mining, but you find food there anyway), buffs don’t matter, and cooking for profit isn’t viable. You’ll barely touch it.

Isn't possible to play unless you have a keyboard despite the Devs lying and stating that you can play on Steam deck, Asus and the like. Doesn't matter if it's potentially good or not when it isn't playable. Refunded and I'll wait to see if I can find it some other way. They clearly don't care for me so I won't give them my money.

I'll start by saying I'm not going to compare this game to the other big titles out there in the farming sim community. Just because I think that if I worked hard on a game, I'd hate for it to be compared to other works. I do not recommend this game, I don't believe that it should be priced at the discount it is currently much less it's full price. Here's why: *Citizens say the exact same dialogue when I talk to them daily *The map does not show where the characters are, so you have to run around to find them and it's too early to know their routines *You walk SO SLOWLY, like moving through molasses, just walking from my farm to town takes FOREVER. The map is huge and it's so hard to explore it without taking days to do so *When you put an item into the shipping bin or into a chest, you have to hit the y button to shift it from your items to the ones in the chest. Small detail but SO annoying if you're grinding the game *During the spring hoedown you can choose a dance partner, and it happens pretty early in the game. If you talk to a character they spit out dialogue and basically ask you to be their partner and your only options are to say yes or no. This happens to literally almost every character. And if you already have a partner and say no they get upset! Like dude we literally just met and you only have 1 heart with me. Why are you heartbroken? Also there was a bug during the hoedown mini game when you win it. *When you go mining, you need mining ladders, lights, and ledges that take up inventory space. Not to mention you need to wear a miners lamp to also see where you're going. *Buildings appear on the map but you can't click on them to tell what they are, and when you walk up to the building it doesn't say it's hours either. And sometimes they close randomly on weekdays without notice. *My backspace button wouldn't work? Be careful when you name your farm, or your cat, or your dog, or yourself.. *The game doesn't save until you sleep through the night, would've loved if you can save at any time *The game is not very clear on upgrades, I want to be able to build a house or upgrade the coop, but it doesn't tell you how to *The portraits for the characters are so well done but some of the men and women look like little kids? Like I literally thought Emily was a little girl but NO she runs the general store! *Your day to day consist of taking care of your animals and watering your crops. You can go mining and complete quests and somehow even with all these things you can do, the game seems boorish and lifeless. I'm going to keep playing and hopefully some different cutscenes or dialogue will appear. But really I felt let down, I had this game in my wish list for a while and had such high hopes for it. I'm wondering if this is all there is to it, or if it will be heavily updated in the future. Like add in new cutscenes and dialogue!! Something!! I have no emotional attachment to any of these characters because their whole personality is "Howdy 🤠" I WANT MOREEE UGH like make me care about these people! What are their backgrounds? Aspirations? What hobbies do they love? It's such a good concept but I really want the developers to DIG DEEP and make the game charming. Don't give us a lifeless game for $20 😭 Anyways I hope this review finds the developers cause they got some work to do. I hope this also helps any of you looking to buy the game.

fun game just wont fish i dont understand the mechanic of it so that quest to catch 20 fish wont get completed why cant it be like stardews mechanic i understand that one better

Oh my, oh my. I really like the premise of the game – it’s basically Stardew Valley with a little western twist, and I’m into it. I’ve played for about 10 hours and I’m still enjoying the classic grind. But there’s one major issue I want to highlight: progression. Something just feels off about it. 1. Uneven character leveling – I’m still in the first season and I’ve already almost maxed out mining and foraging, yet I haven’t even upgraded my tools once or placed a single new building. 2. Uneven progression in buildings and crafting recipes – It feels like the game assumes I already have a shed and a coop (it gives me recipes that require them), but I simply can’t afford to build them yet. They’re way too expensive early on. 3. Town quests – I can’t complete most of them because I haven’t leveled certain skills or unlocked the required crafting recipes. And I have to wait like 7 days for a quest to reset? Why not refresh them daily like in Stardew Valley? 4. Merchant offers – Why is it possible to buy what seems like the entire content of the game on day one from city vendors? It’s confusing and disappointing because: a) I’m not sure if I should buy these things or if the game will unlock crafting recipes for them later. b) I don’t have enough money yet, and I’m not sure what I should be investing in early on. c) There’s no sense of surprise or discovery when everything is available from the start. And to be honest, this really is just Stardew Valley – it has the museum, gathering, mining, fishing, seasonal events, and more. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I love SV! :) But there’s a lot of work to be done - for example major progression issues mentioned above. I really hope the game stays in active development. To come even close to SV, there’s still a ton of content to add – and I hope you do! Please keep going – there are a lot of SV fans rooting for you! :) And I really enjoy the potential of that game.

This game feels FAAAAR from being a product that should have been released already. 100% should still be in early access. Especially when comparing Cattle Country to Fields of Mistria. Comparing Cattle Country to Stardew Valley is unfair since Stardew Valley has been out for many years now. Simple things like rebinding keys (seriously there is no way to change key binds), and knowing what buffs actually do instead of just "Foraging" , "Cooking" , "Mining" is not in the game. You just have to guess. From what I can tell buffs do nothing. I ate food that gave me the "Foraging" buff for 5 minutes and I ran around everywhere grabbing everything I could and there was absolutely ZERO increase in the amount of forageables I got.. Flowers in the fields. Fruits in trees. Spices in the fields. Mushrooms on trees and on the fields. Nothing. Leveling up your skills does not tell you anything about what increasing your skill does other than unlock more items you can craft / cook. There also is no skill tree available for skills unlike other farm sims. Stamina management is horrid. If you mouse over your stamina bar it does not show any numbers at all. So, you just have to guess how many more times you can swing your pickaxe. Swing your axe. Water your crops ect... Or just don't take the risk at all and leave a little bit of stamina left. The game also doesn't tell you when you need to be in bed. The only indicator is your character yawns at 1AM and you need to be in bed by 2AM. If you "pass out" you're charged 100 gold from the doctor, and you wake up in the clinic at the normal time you would on your farm. No side effects. Even if you pass out on your farm area you end up in the clinic. Style and Art is good, and also terrible at the same time. All the pixel art for everything in the game is good enough but the character pixel art for them is horrid. It is at times hard to tell who is who while wandering around the map unless they have a VERY distinctive style. The sisters Mabel and Marry are particularly bad. Now. The REALLY bad. All the character portraits look the same-ish. What appears to be all the romanceable females are very very same-ish. There is also a lack of different character portraits based on what is happening unlike other cozy farm sims. Because the character portraits don't change at all you do not get any feedback such as if they are happy, sad, excited, mad, nervous, embarrassed ect... Planting crops and watering them is like every other cozy farm sim. So is chopping wood. Mining stone / minerals. Fishing is different as it is the type of challenge where an icon moves back and forth from left to right and you have to click at the right time (the green portion of the bar) to catch a fish. Harder fish require more successes to catch. Giving gifts isn't something you discover at all. The game just straight up tells you what the characters like and hate. There are no loved gifts or anything other than like or hate. Very uninspired and bland. We all know that some of the appeal of giving gifts is finding out what characters love, like, hate ect... is just not there. Not good. Going into the mines is interesting. It turns into a 2D side scrolling adventure where you must place torches, platforms, and rope ladders to move around the mine. You would assume space bar would make your character jump, but it doesn't. It took me a good ten minutes to realize that RIGHT CLICK, yes right click; was how you jump. With that said it is a fresh idea on descending down your mine shooting enemies with your six-shooter pistol and mining resources as you go. It is very unlikely I'll put any more time into this game until it receives many updates and patches. My main regret right now is spending 2.2hours so I can't refund it which requires under 2 hours of playtime.

LMAO @ all the losers crying over pronouns like imagine being upset over an extra gender option that literally NO ONE is forcing you to pick??? anyways, this game is super fun! I really enjoy the vibes, I'm also super excited for future updates as the dev(s) seem to listen to player feedback and have been active in replying to people in the community space. So far, i'm enjoying the game, I like how easy-to-figure-out the mechanics are (farming, fishing, mining etc) and once i figure out how to obtain leather it'll be over for the forest critters. I def recommend for anyone who is big into farm sims especially since this one has a fun western twist (and anyone who isn't a little whiny baby afraid of pronouns in the character creation menu)

I’m only about 2.5 hrs in but so far I think it’s a cute ranching game. There’s your usual farming but it’s set in a small southern town that you can customize and clean/build up. I’m excited to see what all there is content-wise! Overall 8.5/10 only because there’s a few QOL issues like no map labels for buildings or markers for people and if you put a chest down near the crafting table it still doesn’t count the inventory inside it like it does in most games automatically. If you enjoy stardew and any other cozy pixel games I think you’ll get your money’s worth out of the game :) ALSO whiners can return the game, gender identity is not woke it’s a right. What happened to America being a free country? That includes us in the LGBTQ+ community! Thank you to the devs for adding it <3

OMG a western farm sim with pronouns!!!!!!!! Yaasssssssssss! Respect is so easy thanks Castle Pixel <3

I bought this game specifically because of all the whiny snowflakes giving it bad reviews because of the pronouns feature. OMG this game added inclusive pronouns and allows people to be called what they want QQ. Get a grip folks. Same people who whine about others being snowflakes are the biggest snowflakes of all. As for the game, haven't really played it yet. Probably won't get to it until I'm done with Clair Obscur. I hope it's fun, the demo seemed interesting and I like the cozy feel of this little farm games. I'd love to give an actual review of the game once I play it some, but for now I simply decided to buy it support the devs mainly because of the whiners.

This game has potential. If there were a "neutral", I would choose that, but I think it has more to offer than it does faults, so, I'll go for the recommended. The map is large and the foraging is wonderful. There are a lot of places to explore, and I haven't unlocked everything yet, for sure! I was really impressed by the variety of mushrooms, trees, flowers and animals round. I quite like the mines, and the town is charming (and pretty!). The residents can be a little hard to track down - I don't really want to spend half the game-day running around looking for whoever's birthday it is, but I'm sure I'll get used to their schedules more with time. There is a lot to explore, and I look forward to progressing! There are still some bugs, but as it's day 1 of release, I hope they'll be resolved. Some of the systems feel a bit unbalanced - for example, I'm accumulating crafting recipes way before I have access to the necessary items...but at least they'll be available when I need them. And yes, it's a nice touch that there is a third title choice, which harms literally no-one, it's a shame some people are getting so upset about it. They could just not use it.

I was actually really excited for this game and personally love farming games, but I just can't recommend this. Everything about this game just feels unfinished and like it's just trying to be the trendy farming game of the month. The farming, fishing and mining feel unsatisfying, the in game economy just feels off since everything cost very little and you get so much money at the start as well as fishing and foraging just not giving much money so it's just not worth doing. There's not much to say about the characters, while it's jun that most of the NPC's are romancable they're just not that interesting and most of them repeated the exact same dialoge every single day. And yeah there is a pronoun choice at the start and as cringy and annoying as it is; it's the least of the games issues. The combat system isn't satisfying but the hunting is actually kind of fun even if the hitboxes do suck for a lot of the animals. I managed to get a deer stuck and found that it only kills if the bullet is a headshot at the very centre. I regret spending my money on this game in the current state it is

Apologies, forgot to review this. Given this for free from dev so I could help bug fix. Nothing much but dev very responsive and they seem nice. As for the game, good fun. I'm waiting on a few more patches and trying to finish Clair Obscur before really settling into this but looking forward to it. I enjoy the change in setting from most farming games and can't wait to see this evolve.

Reference to LOTR. 10/10

cowboy jew man

I am writing this review because of the review written by PirateQueenCarl (this review should be updated or deleted), I think it's out of date, there is some crying and it's harmful to the game and also I think the game deserved to be noticed and I recommend it. *Yes, citizens say the exact same dialogue when you talk to them daily, but it's not a big deal. *The map shows where the characters are and also game shows what characters like or don't like if you wonder what to give them. *You don't walk SO SLOWLY, my character running and i'm doing lot of staff in one day and yes map is big. *Playing on PC so this is not a problem. -> When you put an item into the shipping bin or into a chest, you have to hit the y button to shift it from your items to the ones in the chest. Small detail but SO annoying if you're grinding the game *I did not check the reaction of npc when you said no to them. I have no bug when i win the mini game. *Wow, it's dark in the mine and you need lights, incredible. Yes, you need lights, ladders and ledges but it's not the problem, you can quickly buy a bigger backpack. *Buildings appear on the map and it will show what they are and when you walk to the building it will show when it's open *Backspace work, no problem. *Yes, the game save only when you go to sleep, but days are not so long, you don' need option to save at any time. *Yes, the game is confusing when it comes to upgrading, you don't know what to do to unlock more buildings and animals. *Yes, some characters looks very young on portraits. *The game is boring and lifeless? If you played only 6 hours and considering your review then you did nothing in the game. Besides watering crops, taking care of your animals, mining, completing quests you can also go hunting or fishing, improve relations with characters and you will unlock cutscenes, dialouges, you get to know their backgrounds, they will start giving you a gifts sometimes, and you will unlock new recipes, you can take some things from the train that stops in the city and a lot of other things to do, just play for more than 6 hours before judging the game. Developers still improving the game, adding content, and asking community what they want or need. So yea, Cattle Country is relaxing game where I have so much fun and I honestly recommend it. If you have any questions about the game just leave the comment, if I know the answer I will reply.

I've played a full year of this game thus far and feel pretty confident in writing up my review now. I WOULD recommend this game with a caveat: if you have some extra dosh laying around. Otherwise the price feels a little steep for something that still feels somewhat barebones and requires you to read the minds of the developers to figure out what certain things are for, how to progress and what exactly each event entails. Now it's time for the breakdown (never gonna get it, never gonna get it-- ahem) Style: Acquired taste, it's giving Gleaner Heights in the squished pixel chicken nugget avatars. Not my jam, but forgivable for the immaculate pixel cowboy vibes. Overall I like all the other pixel art choices, but the character styles/avatar styles are not it for me. Despite being tiny, it definitely has detail rich environments and I'm here for that. + 1 for Red Dead voice actor narrating letters to you. Ace. The Not So Good: It's not intuitive. You go into it thinking it's like every other farming sim, which should - arguably - make progression relatively easy, but nothing is really in the formula you're used to, which is a double edged sword. It makes figuring out how to acquire buildings, unlock animals, etc more difficult because A) the game is new, and there is no proper wiki to fill in the gaps left by development, B) There are no in game tooltips, or even breadcrumb dialogue to even *hint* at what you're supposed to do. On the flip side, it can be refreshing to guess, but not at the expense of a whole day, or materials, etc. That gets annoying. EXAMPLE: I am STILL trying to unlock the barn, which I ONLY learned from someone in discussions was unlocked via Maggie at her 1 heart event that I cannot - for the life of me - actually trigger, and my girl is at two hearts. I don't need this stuff spoon fed to me, but I want some hints here and there. Breadcrumbs. Flat characters. All the characters have one line. Just the one. And they repeat it every time you chat with them. A year in and I'm invested in no one with the exception of Jim. Jim because he's just a derpy little mail bean. I know nothing about him past that. More variety would be great. Events. I've enjoyed most of them, I feel like improvement on this front would consist of a bit more flavor text a bit sooner in the mail about what to expect the day of, rather than getting it when the festival is supposed to start. A reminder on that day isn't bad, though-- who hates seeing the little mail bubble? Not me, I dig it. The winter feast secret santa lack of information was a bit of a bummer my first time through, but based on forum discussion, there may be a fix for that soon, so that's good. Machines and Furniture: Full rotations, please. Nothing makes my eye twitch more than to have to arrange my sheds with nothing but front facing machines, same goes for furniture. It seems like there are a few things you can fully rotate, but there's still a lot you can't for a game that's not in EA, and instead released fully. UI/Menu: This is a tough one for me, the menu feels.... meh? Like there should be more, more depth, more resources to pick through, notes, etc. This may just be a me issue, I'm not really sure, but something about the layout feels rushed. Overall I'd just like to see more information, as it is now, it feels like there's more I SHOULD know, that I don't, because I wasn't in the development of the game to know all the little secret pieces. The Good: This game gets a lot right. Chief being the cowboy homesteader vibe. I love it, and I think I could love the game even more with a little spit polish, you know? I love the bandit encounters, I love the music (but y'all could do with a little variety) and the clouds, and the little god rays you get some mornings on the farm, and all the critter life (and lack thereof during winter). Despite the game being frustratingly vague, I've still invested a good 30 some odd hours in it because it IS enjoyable to play, it just feels unfinished in a lot of ways. If my rating meant anything, I'd say it's a good 7/10. Needs some QOL work, tweaking, refining and it probably would be worth the price, as it stands right now, I'd probably wait for a better sale.

Loving this game so far. Stardew elements, with it's own twist. I LOVE the western aspect and that it is taking place in the 1800s. Thoroughly enjoying and can't wait to see where they go with it. Trying to pace myself with the gameplay but its hard. :D

I am very much enjoying the gameplay loop, but I've committed mass deforestation in hopes to rearrange the trees and I've found that I cannot plant trees outside the farm. Please help.

I promised the Dev I would write a review after 100% and well, after 131 hours of awesome entertainment, here it is. I cut my teeth back in the day on a game called Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, my first adventure into Farm-Life sims and I had a blast. Naturally as other farm-life sim games came out, I picked those up as well: Fields of Mistria, Stardew Valley, Mirthwood, Everafter Falls, Medieval Dynasty, and of course the reboot of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature - Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. I also have thrown in a slew of other genres and titles into my game library over the years. One such title is the well known Red Dead Redemption Online. Knowing all that, I now can write my review and it'll make more sense to the reader. This game does what all of the aforementioned titles fail to do, enthrall you into your adventure. The farm-life sims basically "isekai" you into taking over a previously established farm and Red Dead Online fails to provide you with the opportunity to lay down a homestead and do what you can in Cattle Country... which I have been longing for something like this game for the longest time. Hence why I sank 131 hours into it. Graphics - You don't play farm-life sims for graphics, you play them for the feels and sense of accomplishment, but having grown up with Nintendo and Super Nintendo, I am all for pixel graphics. Soundtrack - solid 10 out of 10. Its not the most expansive soundtrack, but its enough and it doesn't constantly play all the songs so you get a break and can enjoy the sounds of nature; which has stopped me in my tracks just to feel the immersion... especially during the thunderstorms. Story - I actually enjoyed all the villagers story lines and the options of what to do/say during the cut-scenes, made me more invested. Glitches/Bugs - I ran into a few, but none were game-breaking, and since the game auto-saves every night, you aren't risking progress. This is where the dev REALLY shines. They are active on this game's discussion boards and will investigate things same day if allowing and reply back to you on their plans and findings, as well as provide you guidance on issues. Overall - Absolutely worth the investment, going to buy it on my PS5 now. To the dev, I love your work, keep it up and I look forward to what this game has in store! Yeehaw!